The year of the Lord's favour. Isaiah 61.

Peace with God in our time.

Acknowledgment. Some of my material for this sermon is drawn from the following published works:

Helmut Thielicke. Life can begin again : sermons on the Sermon on the Mount. James Clark, 1966.

Luigi Gioia. Touched by God : the way to contemplative prayer. Bloomsbury Continuum, 2018.

Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister at the start of World War Two, thought he had achieved ‘peace in our time’, as he put it, by making a pact with the Nazis in Germany. It was soon found to be a fiction. There was to be no peace in his time. The same is true today in Gaza and Ukraine. Where is the peace in our time? Or for that matter, where has any peace been in time? Jesus warned us to expect wars, trials and tribulations before history is concluded. What, then, is the peace that the season of Advent proclaims? What is the message of today’s Old Testament reading from Isaiah 61 about?

Isaiah 61 was originally an oracle for Israel coming home after their exile to Babylon was over in 538 BCE. It was a proclamation of good news to the poor of the land. The captives were released. It was the year of the Lord’s favour, as foretold by the prophet.

Now jump forward some 570 years to Jesus’ time. You will recall that Jesus applied this prophecy to himself when he was invited to preach in the synagogue at Nazareth. It’s known as the Nazareth Manifesto. The question to ask is, who are the poor, the broken hearted, the captives held in darkness, those who mourn? And why is Jesus’ arrival the year of the Lord’s favour?

In Jesus’ day, as in our own century, there is no shortage of the miserable, the lonely, the careworn, and those who are hagridden by anxiety. Then one day, they gathered about on the side of a mountain to hear Jesus preach what we know as the Sermon on the Mount. What did they expect to hear? Religious dogma? Or that they were victims of their own miserable conditions?

At any rate, they all thought he will be calling on them to repent, as John the Baptist did not so long before. So they are gathered on the mountainside knowing, or they think they know, what is going come out Jesus’ mouth: God’s declaration of war against man, denunciation of sin, and painful scrutinizing exposure of their innermost thoughts. But that was not Jesus’ message on that day. The message that day was, the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim freedom for the captives, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.

So when Jesus began to speak on the mountainside, something completely unexpected happened, something that drove the people to astonishment. Jesus said to the crowd who were harried by suffering, misery, guilt and loneliness, blessed are you who are poor, blessed are you who mourn, blessed are you who hunger and thirst for righteousness, and blessed are you who are persecuted.

When Jesus preached repentance, he preached it from the heart with tears. He wept over Jerusalem, which even then failed to recognize the things that made for peace with God in their time. Jesus wept not only because the people of Jerusalem, his own people, were lurching so awfully towards an abyss. Jesus wept because he knew the power of the Seducer, the menacing mystery of the devil who seizes even the upright, the respectable and morally intact by the throat, and grips them in such a way that at first they have no premonition of the dreadful slopes to which they are being edged by a consummate cunning. These are ones who are held captive, who Jesus has come to set free.

And what about the poor and miserable, those who are persecuted? Why are they called blessed? Because it is as if Jesus might answer the question himself this way:

“The reason why you who are miserable and afraid are called blessed is simply that I am with you in all of it. You complain because you must suffer. Look, I myself found my calling in extreme suffering, and I learned obedience through it. You complain that in all your sufferings the face of God has vanished, that you cannot feel his presence, and you are left so dreadfully alone. Look, I too had that feeling of god-forsakenness which found its vent in the cry of dereliction of loneliness.

“Don’t you understand my brothers and sisters? You are blessed because I am in the midst of you, and that because you are suffering my sorrows, I will also lead you to my fulfillments and my blessings.”

How can we be sure of all this? Well, we have a signature, sealed with blood and sanctified by our Lord’s own sufferings and his resurrection. A signature certifying that in everything God works for good with those who love him. This, then, is why the Nazareth Manifesto commissions Jesus as the anointed one to bring good news to the poor, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim freedom for the captives, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.

Now, there are two points to how the brokenhearted are restored, to how the poor receive the gospel as good news, and to how freedom is proclaimed to those who are captive to sin. The first, as I’ve already looked at, is because we have a Lord and Saviour who knows what human suffering is better than any of us could ever know. The second point is that those who are afflicted in these ways are allowed the freedom to mourn and to weep.

They are not mourning and weeping out of the shame associated with betraying our holy and loving God the way the story of sin’s entry into human history is told in Genesis chapter three. That’s not freedom; that’s captivity to shame, wallowing and self-pity. But in Christ there is no shame, and life can begin again. So what is this freedom to mourn and to weep on hearing good news that the broken hearted are restored?

It is the freedom to hand yourself over to God in absolute trust, knowing that he will set you free from your fears and anxieties. Whatever your past has been, you have a spotless future. Life can begin again. But how does mourning and weeping give effect to handing our broken selves over to God? It is because God has given us the gift of emotional expression, with tears. So let them flow. It brings relief. It expresses godly sorrow. It hands over to our loved ones how we feel about ourselves. And is not God our loved one?

Did not a weeping nameless woman anoint Jesus’ feet with oil and wipe them with her hair? Jesus became her loved one, and he commended her. She found peace with God in her time. She might have been nameless then, but she has been remembered for two thousand years for her expression of love for Jesus. And did not Peter weep bitterly after he denied Jesus three times? Jesus did not condemn him. He knows what being human is. Jesus loved Peter, and Peter was restored and re-commissioned after he declared to the risen Lord, you know I love you.

A close friend of mine wrote a verse for me about this point at a time when I was feeling very lost:

God said to me, "Be of good cheer, Little Soul. Something is going so right if only you could see what I see in your life. So don't be in a hurry to toss aside your scars, your troubles, your panics, and your tears. They are only what you see with your worldly mind. But all your mournful complaints are as precious rubies to me, if only you would trust me, sight unseen with faith seeking understanding.”

“Go into the recesses of your heart where your truth nestles. Look at the sorrows of your life and all the hard knocks and betrayals, all those loves-gone-cold, and see my love at work in you. This is where your treasure is hidden. It is not in the stars but in your scars.”

A second reason why lamenting brings freedom to our souls is that our God is a listening god. When God listens generously to those who mourn, he creates a sanctuary for the homeless parts within us. His is a ministry of presence and of a safe place. To be listened to, attentively and sensitively, is one of the most therapeutic experiences we can have, because it taps into our deep need to be taken seriously, and to be acknowledged, validated, and valued for who we are. God excels in empathy listening because he knows what it is to be human through his Son, Jesus Christ, and because his love for us is paramount.

And herein lies the antidote to loneliness. The very essence of loneliness is the lack of a sense of being heard, validated, attended to, and acknowledged. Who can I trust with my innermost thoughts, fears, hopes, doubts, and anxieties? Who will listen? If there is no one to listen, then the homeless parts within us remain homeless. But when God listens, we return home and cry out, thanks be to God someone has heard me. Someone knows what it is like to be me.

Here, then, is why Jesus chose the words from the prophet Isaiah to inaugurate his ministry of proclaiming good news to the poor, comforting those who mourn and lifting up the broken hearted.

These words from Sirach 2 are apt:

Consider the ancient generations and see.

Who ever trusted in the Lord and was put to shame? Or who ever persevered in the fear of the Lord and was forsaken? Or who ever called upon him and was overlooked?

For the Lord is compassionate and merciful; he forgives sins and saves in time of affliction.

In other words, because the Father has anointed the Son to bring good news to the poor, comfort those who mourn and lift up those who are broken hearted, they will never be forsaken or overlooked or put to shame whenever they cry out and call upon his name. They are the ones who have peace with God in their time, the great Advent message.

Philip Starks
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